About This Poem

“After withdrawing from a PhD program, I worked a variety of jobs: library security guard, high school English teacher, flower delivery driver, etc. During my many hours of solitude delivering flowers, contemplating my future, I recited and revised new lines of poetry out loud, recording them on my phone. ‘Death to Paint Us’ is one such poem.”—J. Michael Martinez

A hollowed singularity exists in flowers
like pathos in a dandelion:
an eddy of fate, degreeless,
silvering through memory.
A scabbed consonant departing
the sentence: locust petal, bromeliad,
a surfacing shame, lightless, beyond hearing.
Solitary, the clock circumvents sound
and a horse importunes
a wasp bowing before significance.
●
It is in fact doubtless a wasp bows before significance
degreeless in a dandelion.
It also stands to reason that, in a clock, locusts circumvent memory
in order to depart through fate.
And anyone can see that singularity exists lightless
like an eddy of pathos surfacing beyond hearing.
In conclusion, however solitary
(and you know this as well as I),
a consonant will always
depart the sentence before shamed by a horse.